Solve the mysteries of your emotional life by learning to investigate and interpret how you feel. Psychologist Cindy Meyer offers maps and tools for understanding and improving the alignment of your emotions, feelings, and thoughts -- to feel more whole. Read more...

03/24/2011

Missing Emotions

Sometimes we don't feel our emotions. It is as though they are hidden or frozen inside us. Such emotional detachment may have occured occassionally in your past, for example if there were certain notable experiences in your childhood when you felt nothing. Or perhaps your disconnection is ongoing, and you often fail to emotionally respond to significant events in your current life. Maybe you are a person who has rarely felt your emotions, past or present.

More likely, you have felt some of your emotions, but you have overlooked or been confused about others. For example, if you are easily irritated, or take a lot of risks, you may be disconnected from fear. If you are overly nice, you may ignore your anger.

While some people may see emotional detachment as a blessing or even a source of pride, it's not really natural for human beings and mammals to be indifferent to changes that pertain to their happiness. This is only really normal for aliens from Vulcan.

Humans react to meaningful events with basic emotions: anger, fear, sadness, disgust or joy. People who don't feel their emotions often experience an inchoate, but pervasive sense of emptiness. This is a common problem in our postmodern society, where so many of us have stopped paying attention to our personal feelings.

The absence of certain feelings can be a clue to a problem, or to what I call metaphorically an "emotional crime." Because emotions are a universal part of human nature, not feeling them suggests that something has gone wrong. Sometimes it is obvious that something is emotionally amiss, for example, when emotional coolness is accompanied by extreme sentimentality. In these circumstances, the excessive emotionality in certain areas of life seems to be compensating for the lack of feeling under ordinary, personal circumstances.

The lack of "normal" emotions in response to certain stressors can be an important clue to missing feelings, one that is easily overlooked. Emotional numbness should be a signal that sends you looking for feelings that have been hidden or disguised. Unless, of course, you are Mr. Spock.

How to lookout for missing feelings?

Learn when to expect emotions so you know what emotions to look for. Certain specific types of triggers reliably prompt certain basic emotions:

Frustration triggers anger

Threat triggers fear

Satisfaction prompts joy

Loss prompts sorrow

Revulsion prompts disgust

Reflect on which of these basic emotions you rarely experience, or which ones you experience regularly that seem somehow "off.". Use your private eye to look inside to uncover your more natural emotions, signals that will direct you to more of your true self.

Think about why you might conceal certain unpleasant feeling states, even from yourself.

Be on the lookout for your missing emotions.

If you discover remnants of an unfamiliar or seemingly inappropriate emotion, jot it down in your notebook. (for example, if you well with tears when it would be natural to become angry, or always become angry when you are hurt).

The more you learn about your emotions and feelings, the more you'll start to notice when
they occur inside you. As an Emotional Detective, you will eventually come to see emotions
like a carpenters sees nails.

Comments

You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.

Hi Nicky -

You have some clues because you know the ages when your emotions went missing. Think back to what happened when you were age 6, and focus on what was going on during the next few years through age 10. It sounds like something might have happened to make love scary, to send it underground. Look at the series Tidying Up Emotions (in the navigation bar under Topics -- Emotional Detective - In Training) to get some tools to go back and explore what happened.

trying to find the clue, i'have been lost several feeling of emotion. when i was 6 i starting to feel no love and can't love someone or even object. when i was 10 happy feeling and sad suddenly gone. i'm not lying, this is what i feel

Another thing to consider is a lack of proper conditioning and/or modeling. Example, a child that is raised in a very dysfunctional, non loving, and abusive environment will have significant deficiencies in positive emotional behaviors.

I believe this is the root cause to my challenges when it comes to emotional liberty...

The idea proposed is a very interesting one. It makes sense and is very real. I think a big factor that leads to one having "missing emotions" is they type of person they are. Some people are very emotional and even the littlest thing can set them off. Others, it takes something significant or monumental to set them off. In addition to people having different "thresholds" for emotional responses, another big factors that comes into play is peoples' significant connection to the situation they are emotionally reacting to. For example, some people can't handle facing certain truths or events in their life so they will typically shut down and have no emotional response or an indifferent response. It is important to pick up on these "missing emotions" as mentioned before, for one can learn a lot of themselves and maybe even solve problems in their lives if they just look within themselves.

Thinking about emotions, I've realized that I'm pretty honest with myself when it comes to how I'm feeling. I don't try to suppress my feelings. When I'm sad, I'm sad. When I'm scared, I'm scared. Depending on the situation, I either want to be alone or surrounded by my close friends. In either situation, I will reflect on how I'm feeling and try to talk about it and make sense of it.

After reading your passage, it has taken me some time to figure out what emotions I am hiding. I may not "hide" my emotions of sorrow, anger or fear, but I am definitely not upfront with them. Usually when one of these three emotions comes over me, I keep to myself and stay very quiet. I guess thats my personal way of hiding and it may be better to just let them out.

It is interesting that you mention "missing emotions" because I have a friend who never seems to cry. She feels sad about many things but it never usually evolves into the despair that many people feel at some thing or another. Situations have come and go when the people that are all around her will all be in tears, but she will not shed one.

This brings me to wonder whether or not all people possess every emotions. Is it possible that she does not contain the ability to "be as sad" as everyone else does? Or is it, like you suggest, something that she suppresses within her?

I stress out a lot and am often paralyzed by fear from the most insignificant of things. I know that this is something I have to work on and I am really going to try to bring out the emotions that have been missing from my life, like happiness and relaxation. Thanks for all your help!

By looking deeper within ourselves in search of missing emotions, we can become more self-aware. Sometimes I have a difficult time knowing what an appropriate emotion is in certain circumstances. Perhaps this is because I never thought to consider the one that most accurately describes my emotions, as is has been missing in the past. Thanks for bringing this to my attention!

Could it also be a part of human nature to suppress painful emotions? In some cases, the human mind might understand that those emotions could be dealt with at a later time. One's own subconscious could understand, that in a situation such as a death, or any other crisis, many things need to be taken care of besides ones own mental health. Thus, missing emotions are used as a sort of prioritizer for the mind to allow it to be clear and still able to execute the tasks ahead. Do know that your blog is well-written and provocative.

In this picture the character looks pensive. He face resembles the impermeability of rock; he is emotionless, cold, and introspective. He is not coldhearted, but rather too intellectually deep to be concerned with dim-witted thoughts which surround him. He is both resilient and strong.

I think that sometimes we hide from our emotions because we don’t want to deal with them. Is it really that they are repressed, hidden or disguised or that we choose to not deal or confront them? Emotions such as guilt, disgust, or others that make us look fragile or mean, are often not shown because we refuse to put ourselves in a position of weakness.

Its so interesting to think that maybe the basis of our problems has to do with emotions that we may never experience! Rather than just focusing on what emotions are at the surface, we have to try to find what emotions we do not experience and why this is important. I would never have thought to think more internally like that! thanks!

There are conditions where people do not feel emotions or get so overwhelmed with emotions that they have a crisis. Similarly with pain, if you cannot feel pain it is life threatening. So it is evolutionarily needed to feel emotions (and pain). I was just out of town and I had strong emotions of wanting to come home. Now that I am home, I feel much happier. So my emotions were contextual!

Dr. Meyer has worked in private practice in West Los Angeles for over 25 years, and is an Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology at UCLA. She earned her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from UCLA and her B.A. from Oberlin College.